


With Vacations Like These, Who Needs a Job?

by candlesneedflame



Series: The Teenage Vigilante's Guide [3]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Check end notes for warnings, Comedy, Dadpool, Do not tag this spideypool, Gen, Mentions of Mental Illness, Mentions of Sex, Possible Body Horror, The Wade/Matt tag is bc they are fwb and that is mentioned at, WADE WILSON KILLS PEDOPHILES FOR FUN, but its definitely not the focus, but theres a dash of trauma sprinkled in there, its mostly comedy, not spideypool, well more like cool older cousin wade wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 03:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlesneedflame/pseuds/candlesneedflame
Summary: Weasel flaps the rag at her as he continues talking to Wade. “You work with Daredevil, and him and Spider-Man are tight. And I know you worked with Spider-Man that one time on the zombie thing, so it didn’t really feel right handing this out,” he says, setting down the glass in order to pull a gold card from the chest pocket of his flannel shirt.Weasel holds it out, and Wade takes it from him to read it. Both Nathan and Domino lean in on either side of him to get a look at the name ‘Spider-Man’ printed in neat black letters.





	With Vacations Like These, Who Needs a Job?

**Author's Note:**

> This is going up unbeta'd, but I hope you guys still enjoy it! Check end notes for possible triggers, and enjoy!

“Dude,” Matt says from where he’s lying on Wade’s couch, drinking straight from a bottle of gin, “you need a vacation.”

 

Wade, who’s lying peacefully on the floor beside the couch, snakes his arm up and steals the gin from his compatriot. “What are you talking about? I’m always on vacation! I travel to exotic places and meet new people—”

 

“And kill them. Then hop on a plane to who-knows-where to kill who-knows-who,” Matt finishes dryly though he doesn’t try and snag the liquor back. “I’m just saying I’m…”

 

There’s a moment of very pained, very awkward silence in which Wade is almost positive he can hear Matt’s teeth grinding.

 

“I’m worried about you.”

 

Wade very unattractively chokes on a mouthful of gin and spits it all over himself. Despite the fact that Matt can’t see the rivulets dripping down Wade’s chin and soaking through his shirt, he still manages to look suitably grossed out.

 

“Aw, Matty! I never knew you cared so much!” Wade says in an obnoxious falsetto, sitting up and pulling Matt off the couch and into a hug which is ended rather abruptly by the heel of Matt’s hand being shoved into his throat.

 

“I’m being serious, Wade,” he snaps, getting all uptight and prickly like he always does when he actually cares about the issue at hand because, oh yeah, he’s _worried_ about Wade. He doesn’t try to get back on the couch though, instead just sitting on Wade’s chest where he’d been dragged down to. “Your body sounds more fucked up than usual, and I know you haven’t slept in _at least_ three days.”

 

“Just three? That’s the estimate you’re going with? I mean, if we’re going by price-is-right rules then I guess technically you still win. And maybe my body sounds fucked up because you’re, oh, I don’t know, crushing my sternum?”

 

The flat look he gets in response to that along with the bottle being stolen back is enough to force a sigh out of him.

 

“Hey, if it weren’t for my Abnormally Ample Assassination Adventures then we’d either be doing this at your place or in a homeless shelter, so you better be grateful, young man,” Wade says in response to the glare, pointing at Matt to punctuate the statement.

 

It’s the truth, really. With the last fruitless attempt to commit suicide, Wade had blown up his apartment and pretty much everything inside it. After deciding he could reside at the X-Mansion no longer, he’d had to find some way to earn enough money to put down a deposit on a new place and buy all new everything including guns and replacements for his now-charred stash of fake IDs and passports. Wade Wilson might buy bargain brand paper towels, but he knows better than to cheap out when it comes to forged government documents. Normally he has exactly enough money to restart his life stashed away in an offshore account, but this time he’d emptied that account to buy the high test fuel that led to the explosion in the first place. Hence the never-ending hit list that only went on pause because of actual zombies.

 

“Look, I’m not saying you don’t have a good reason, I’m just saying take a break. Give yourself a week off to not do the whole Deadpool thing—just be Wade Wilson. And maybe take a fucking nap while you’re at it,” Matt says, his head tilted in Wade’s direction to give the illusion that he’s looking at him.

 

“If you want me to go to sleep then you better do something to wear me out, Red,” Wade replies with a grin, and Matt rolls his eyes but sets the bottle aside on the coffee table anyway.

 

* * *

 

“And oh my God, Doms. The _things_ this kid can do,” Wade says with an exaggerated moan. “I swear he could strangle himself with his own thighs if he wanted.”

 

“That sounds more like something you’d be into than anyone else,” Domino replies, bumping her shoulder into Wade’s and laughing when he ends up with a mouthful of her hair.

 

Nathan, ever the responsible one, sighs. “When you say 'kid'…”

 

Wade waves a hand dismissively as they file into Sister Margaret’s, the sound of dirty rock and smell of liquor spilling out onto the street the second that the door swings open. “Late twenties, early thirties. Not sure really; I never asked. It’s never really come up when we’re working, and my brain stops functioning the second he—”

 

“I really don’t need to hear more about your sexcapades,” Nathan says with a grimace as they all slide onto the barstools, already permanently sticky despite the fact they’d only been bought the week before to replace the ones destroyed in yet another fight.

 

“Racist _and_ homophobic? You’re well on your way to the bigot trifecta aren’t you, Mr. Summers?” Wade says, leaning over the bar to grab three shot glasses and the closest bottle of rail.

 

“For fuck's sake,” Nathan groans, much to Domino’s obvious amusement.

 

“No no no, keep going. I’d _love_ to hear all about it,” she says, propping her elbows up on the bar and immediately regretting it when she feels her skin stick to a half-dried puddle of lord only knows. “What else can Daredevil do?”

 

“Well, Doms, I’m glad you asked,” Wade says, much to Nathan’s horror.

 

Thankfully for all parties involved, Weasel happens to be within hearing range at that moment.

 

“You guys talking about Daredevil?” he asks, walking over with a dirty glass in one hand and an even dirtier rag in the other.

 

“About how flexible he is,” Wade says agreeably, pouring out three shots and passing one each to Nathan and Domino. “Why?”

 

“Because I know you’re on good terms with him—”

 

Domino snorts and sets her now empty shot glass down, sliding it back over to Wade. “That’s putting it mildly.”

 

Weasel flaps the rag at her as he continues talking to Wade. “You work with Daredevil, and him and Spider-Man are tight. And I know you worked with Spider-Man that one time on the zombie thing, so it didn’t really feel right handing this out,” he says, setting down the glass in order to pull a gold card from the chest pocket of his flannel shirt.

 

Weasel holds it out, and Wade takes it from him to read it. Both Nathan and Domino lean in on either side of him to get a look at the name ‘Spider-Man’ printed in neat black letters.

 

“You think because I know him I should blast his brains out? Hell no! You know I don’t do—” Wade cuts himself off abruptly because no, these people don’t know that Spider-Man is a kid. Don’t give that one away, idiot. People know he’s young, but most of them assume he’s at least college-aged. “No, Daredevil would literally kill me.”

 

“I don’t want you to kill him, dumbass. I wanted to give you the chance to warn him, give him a head start. Because eventually the guy who hired it is gonna find out nobody took the hit and try somewhere else. He had a whole list of people, and I took some of them to give out, but there were a couple I told him to find somewhere else,” Weasel explains.

 

“Who else did he want dead?” Wade asks out of morbid curiosity as he slides the card for Spider-Man into his pocket.

 

“Captain America, for one. I passed on that one. Black Widow, passed on her too because she’d just kill whoever took it. We took James Rhodes, Pepper Potts, and uhh…” Weasel scrunches up his face as he fishes for what is presumably another name.

 

“We took Happy Hogan too, sir,” Dopinder says helpfully from where he’s been mopping unnoticed nearby. “And a Peter Parker.”

 

Wade snaps to attention at that.

 

Wade got to know Spider-Man's real name during the whole zombie debacle, but he'd never tried to pursue a last name. There have to be a bunch of fifteen-almost-sixteen Peters in Queens; it isn’t exactly an uncommon name. Besides, Wade has no reason to try and unmask him since he already knows what the kid looks like. Curiosity sated. Until now at least.

 

“Tell me about Peter Parker,” he says.

 

“Uh, some honor student from Queens. It’s weird; everyone else on the guy’s list is super tight with Tony Stark, but that one was just sorta jammed in there,” Weasel answers.

 

Shit. Fuck. Goddamn. This isn’t good.

 

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a phone call,” he says, standing abruptly before walking out of the bar and onto the street that’s relatively quieter, leaving his friends all staring at his back in confusion before they just shrug it off. Wade’s just like that sometimes.

 

Wade leans against the wall and pulls out his phone, scrolling through the contacts until he finds Matt.

 

It rings for approximately two seconds before Matt picks up.

 

“Hey, I was wondering—” Wade starts before being cut off harshly.

 

“Why the fuck did you set your name to that in my phone, Wade?!” Matt hisses.

 

“Because it’s true?” Wade tries, unsure of why Matt seems so pissed about it.

 

“My phone says the contact name out loud. You ever consider that maybe someone with a professional career might not want their phone to start screaming ‘Burn Victim Booty Call’ at full volume?!” he snaps.

 

Ooh yikes. Forgot about Red’s day job, didn’t he?

 

 “It’s too late for you to be meeting with clients,” he points out.

 

“I know, but what if you’d called when I was with one?”

 

“Sincerest apologies, Redthew,” Wade says, and he is actually being sincere. “But I was calling to ask about Peter.”

 

Matt’s still definitely pouting on the other end of the call, but he seems more petulant than angry now. “What about him?”

 

“His last name is Parker, right?”

 

Matt doesn’t reply.

 

“Honor student from Queens? Has some connection to Tony Stark?”

 

“You know Spider-Man and Stark are connected, dumbass,” Matt says, though he’s starting to sound a bit more worried.

 

“Yes, but I’m not asking about him. I’m asking about Peter Parker.” Wade is definitely getting a little bit impatient by this point. It’s noble to not want to give away the kid’s identity, but this is a matter of life and death—or life and exposure if the kid actually beats whatever hitman gets sent after him.

 

“You have Spider-Man’s number; just call him yourself,” Matt says before the line goes dead.

 

Wade sighs dramatically before scrolling through his contacts to find ‘Peter (babychild)’. Once he does, he calls.

 

It takes closer to twenty seconds for Peter to pick up, and when he does it’s with a soft, “De— uh Wade? What’s going on?”

 

“Your last name is Parker, right?” he asks right off the bat.

 

“Uh,” the kid says.

 

“Oh for fuck's sake. I tell you mine you tell me yours, yeah?” He doesn’t give the kid a chance to say anything, affirmative or otherwise, before continuing. “My name is Wade Winston Wilson. And you are?”

 

“Peter Benjamin Parker,” Peter answers after a moment.

 

“Motherfucking fuck,” Wade says emphatically, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second. “Okay, now tell me how Peter Parker is connected to Tony Stark.”

 

There’s a moment of silence. “Wade, you know that…”

 

“I’m not asking about your fursona; I’m asking about how _Peter Parker_ is connected.”

 

“I’m an intern at Stark Industries. But that started because of you-know-what. Why are you asking all this?” Peter says, and Wade can almost hear the kid’s eyes narrowing in suspicion.

 

“No reason. Bye!” Wade hangs up abruptly and wishes he had a pillow to scream into because screaming on the street, while not uncommon in New York City, is still frowned upon.

 

He heads back into the building and takes his seat back between Nathan and Domino who both give him their patented concerned looks when he thunks his head down onto the bar.

 

“Hitting your head on shit won’t make the voices go away,” Weasel teases morbidly, earning himself a middle finger in response.

 

“Tell me who you gave Peter Parker to and I promise not to brain myself on your bar.”

 

“Gave him to Roger. But if you poach his hit, then I’m not gonna feel sorry for you if he shoots you. Hell, he probably doesn’t need an excuse to shoot you anymore after all the shit you’ve pulled.”

 

Of fucking _course_ it went to someone who hates him with a burning passion.

 

“Who called for the hit?”

 

Weasel sighs. “I have no idea. It’s not like the guy gave me his LinkedIn.”

 

“Well, then how much is he paying?”

 

“Twenty grand. Why?”

 

That’s an absurdly high price to pay to kill someone of very little importance in the grand scheme of things. It’s probably a personal grudge, not a business feud with Stark. And there are almost as many people with a grudge against Tony Stark as there are people he’s slept with. Great.

 

Wade groans loudly. “Because I have to go empty my bank account.”

 

* * *

 

Roger, as it turns out, is more than happy to pawn the hit off to Wade for the low, low price of twenty-five thousand dollars, so once again Wade is out his fake ID, gun, and furniture-that-isn’t-from-Ikea-or-Craigslist money.

 

With two shiny gold cards in his pocket and a just barely negative balance in his bank account, Wade knows he only has a limited amount of time before whoever hired the hit realizes that it isn’t going to happen and finds someone else. Of all the names given, Peter Parker is the least well known and least heavily guarded and therefore the easiest to knock off. Unfortunately for Wade, that means the guy who called for the hit probably expects it to be done fast. Especially since he’s paying so much. Within this slightly nebulous time constraint, he needs to figure out who it is that wants all these people dead.

 

He’s already established that it’s someone with a personal grudge against Tony Stark, but he’s also already established that that’s a big fucking pool of suspects. To narrow the scope, he’ll have to figure out who has a grudge and a bank account big enough to pull it off. But again, around Tony Stark, that’s still a highly suspicious number of people.

 

Now, Wade definitely isn’t dumb, but he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer either, so when he gets a call from Weasel twenty-four hours after the hit (which is admittedly a bit faster than even he was expecting) was placed on Peter Parker saying that the guy decided to take his business elsewhere because, really, how hard can it be to kill a sixteen-year-old, he still has approximately no idea who could be calling for any of these hits. Wade rather pointedly says that the kid is actually fifteen and that anyone who gets sent to do the job gets their hands ripped off and shoved up their ass, before hanging up.

His mission has changed from find out who wants all these people (but mostly the kid) dead to find out who wants these people (but mostly the kid) dead _and_ keep the kid from getting killed or exposing himself in the meantime. That can’t be too hard.

 

Right?

 

A very quick search on Instagram yields wonderful results, and Wade gets a veritable wealth of information regarding the kid. His friends? Check. His favorite restaurant? Check? His AcaDec club practice schedule? Yikes, but Check. His school? Check. That last bit of information is the most relevant because it’s going to be the easiest place to find Peter. Sure, he could probably annoy Matt or Jessica into giving him the kid’s address, but the likelihood of someone trying to execute the contract on him between school and his apartment is a little too high for Wade’s liking. He’s already spent way too much fucking money keeping this kid (who can almost definitely handle himself) safe to let him get assassinated on a twenty-minute commute. According to Google, he has six and a half hours until the kid gets out of school, and he plans on being there.

 

The Deadpool suit, while incredibly fashionable, isn’t exactly low profile enough for some light stalking of a teenager. Then again, Wade’s face isn’t very low profile either. Still, burn victim is less noticeable than red and black with katanas strapped to his back, so it’s the one he’s goin’ with.

 

When he puts on his superperson-in-civvies disguise of sunglasses and a baseball cap, it’s actually pretty hard to tell his face is as fucked up as it actually is. As Weasel and Ness had very helpfully decided one night over drinks, Wade’s lack of eyebrows significantly ups the strangeness factor of his already strange appearance. The oversized aviators cover that part of his face, and when he catches a glimpse of his reflection in a car window, he has to admit he does manage to look more like a normal ugly person and less like a horribly scarred and/or deformed one.

 

He stands on the street just in front of the school, leaning up against the side of a building as he looks around to evaluate the area. A few people walking past, none that are visibly armed or seem dangerous unless you count the second-hand vape from the frat boy who just walked by. It smells like mangos, but Wade’s still pretty sure he remembers reading multiple headlines about those things containing formaldehyde and a few more stories about the damn things actually exploding in people’s faces. He even vaguely remembers talking to a colleague who said that, if you know what you’re doing, tampering with somebody’s vape is a solid way to kill them. Despite the fact that no one on the street is an apparent threat, there are about as many unguarded windows as a Presidential motorcade route through Dallas. It’s the kind of place that Wade would personally love to do a job in and for once that fucking blows.

 

The bell rings, and the kiddos start spilling out onto the street, either grouped together in small packs and chattering away or already plugged into their phones in preparation for the commute home. And isn’t it just a testament to Wade’s age that he’s both shocked and offended by the fact that the ‘bell’ is actually just a recording played over the school intercom system. It takes a couple of minutes, but eventually, Peter shows up. He turns around just long enough to wave at someone before heading down the street away from where Wade is standing.

 

Once there’s a reasonable amount of distance between them, Wade starts following. Peter seems to draw himself up into a tenser stance, and he throws a cursory glance either side of himself, but he doesn’t even try and look behind himself for some reason. Wade kind of wants to beat Matt for not teaching the kid to always check his six, but he also doesn’t want to be partially responsible for inflicting the beginnings of a lifetime of riddled with crippling paranoia on the kid.

 

He shakes the thoughts away and focuses on their surroundings, because if he lets his guard down and the kid gets hurt, or worse, exposes himself to the world as Spider-Man or just a superhuman in general then he’ll never forgive himself. Wade’s life was _significantly_ complicated when his identity was discovered by the authorities, and he doesn’t wish that shit upon anyone, no siree

 

Wade continues following as Peter leads their descent into a subway station, managing to keep his distance well enough but still have eyes on the kid. There are a lot more people here, and Wade’s doing his best to keep his eyes peeled for the sign that anyone around them might have a gun or knife or something strapped to themselves beneath their clothes, but he doesn’t see anything. They make it through the turnstiles and safely down to the platform. The subway is already waiting there, its doors wide open.

 

As Peter steps onto the car, Wade sees a guy in a hoodie split off from where he’d been leaning against a pillar casually and head towards Peter with an unmistakable intensity. Oh no you don’t, buddy.

 

Wade steps between the guy and the doors just as they close.

 

The guy looks pissed until Wade grabs his wrist hard enough that he can feel the bones creaking in his hold.

 

“Did you not get the message that anyone who takes this hit gets their hands ripped off, or are you just that fucking dumb?” Wade asks the guy.

 

Instead of a response, Wade gets a knife jammed into his stomach, presumably the knife this guy had been planning on killing Peter with. When the expected reaction of coughing up blood and collapsing doesn’t come to accompany the red soaking through Wade’s shirt, the guy looks shell-shocked.

 

“You asshole, I liked this shirt,” Wade whines obnoxiously before tightening his hold on the guy until his wrist is just a hair away from snapping. “Now tell me who hired you before I take your hand with me too.”

 

“Too?” the guy squeaks.

 

* * *

 

That night, Wade finds himself sitting across from Weasel at Sister Margret’s, sipping at a sex on the beach as he twirls his new knife (cleaned thoroughly of his blood, of course) in one hand.

 

His interrogation of the hitman only got him some supremely lousy answers to his questions, and it had been quick enough that he managed to stalk Peter all the way to Avengers Tower. After loitering around the building creepily, but far enough away that security wouldn’t notice, he’d followed the kid back to his apartment. He saved the address because he definitely plans on escorting Peter to and from _everywhere_ until this shit gets sorted.

 

“So let me get this right,” Domino says from where she’s perched on the barstool to his left. “You spent twenty-five grand to get one hitman off this kid’s back, and now you’re mutilating anyone else who tries to kill him.”

 

Wade nods miserably, and Weasel pours him a sympathy shot to go with his drink.

 

“Why do you even care if he dies or not?” she continues.

 

“Because it ain’t fair for the kid to die just cause he got all caught up in Stark’s shit,” Wade mumbles into the rim of his shot glass before downing its contents.

 

Neither Weasel nor Domino buy that, but they don’t try and push for a real answer, because if Wade Wilson is actually managing to keep his trap shut about something then there’s no way in hell anyone’s getting the truth out of him.

 

“Sorry you’re out so much money, man,” Weasel says instead. “Maybe you should make a receipt and send it to Stark. See if he refunds you for keeping his intern breathing.”

 

“That’s not a bad idea,” Wade replies.

 

* * *

 

While escorting Peter to school the next morning, Wade gets stabbed again, this time in the arm.

 

He knocks out the hitman and stashes him behind a dumpster after tying him up with his own shoelaces before continuing to follow Peter to school. Once he’s sure the kid is safe in the building, he circles back around to where he left the hitman and spends the entirety of the seven hours Peter is at school for working information out of the guy and doing his best to follow up on it. This time he at least gets a phone number when he forces the guy to call and say he’s quitting the hit.

 

While stalking Peter home from school, Wade is fortunately spared of any grievous injuries due to the fact that another hitman hasn’t been sent yet.

 

He makes his way into the alley beside Peter’s building after watching the kid walk inside and grabs the duffel bag he hid back there containing a few weapons and the Deadpool suit. It isn’t glamorous, but he suits up in the alley before making his way up to the roof via the fire escape to wait for Spider-Man to emerge.

 

Two hours later, Spider-Man pops out of a window that just happens to be right next to the fire escape, and Wade adds onto his mental list that he needs to make the fire escape inaccessible from the outside of the building. Can protecting this kid not get any more difficult? Please? Before Peter can get too far away though, he needs to get the kid’s attention.

 

“Spider-Man!” he yells, jumping up and down and waving both hands at the kid like a moron. “Hey, Spider-Man! Over here!”

 

It had occurred to him late the night before, that if the person was impatient enough to find a new hitman to take out Peter after twenty-four hours, then he might be impatient enough to try and find someone else to get Spider-Man after what has to be nearing or even past forty-eight hours. If someone tries to take out Spider-Man then if they’re smart they’ll probably try and get the job done with a long range rifle; something he’s sure the kid isn’t used to having aimed at him. If he has to take a bullet to keep Spidey safe, so be it. He isn’t letting that twenty-five grand go to waste.

 

Peter spins around the second Wade starts hollering like a drunk kid during spring break and swings back over onto his roof to confront him.

 

“Deadpool? What are you doing here?” he asks, tilting his head in the same confused way Matt does sometimes.

 

“I’m here to see you, dummy,” Wade replies as though it’s obvious. “We haven’t worked together since the whole z—virus thing. I wanted to make sure you were still alive!”

 

“You talked to me on the phone like two days ago,” Peter replies skeptically. “Also, what was that about?”

 

“Nothing! Maybe I just want to get to know my friendly neighborhood Spider-Man better!”

 

Although the suit doesn’t narrow its eyes like it used to before Spider-Man switched to the bulletproof suit, Wade is 100% sure that’s the face the kid is making beneath the cartoonish white eyes.

 

“Okay, fine,” Wade says with a sigh. “I have some friends who want me to get better at doing the Deadpool thing nonlethally. And you’re an expert on nonlethal, so I thought I’d follow you around and see how it’s done.”

 

“Daredevil does nonlethal too,” Peter points out, still obviously hesitant to accept Wade’s words at face value. Smart kid.

 

“I’m not talking throw people off buildings and put them into comas they’ll never wake up from nonlethal, I’m talking legitimate PG-13 nonlethality,” Wade insists, and the second he sees the kid’s shoulders slump a little he knows he’s won.

 

“Fine. You can tag along as long as you don’t kill anyone,” Peter decides finally.

 

“Deal.”

 

“Or maim them.”

 

Damn. This one _is_ the sharpest knife in the drawer.

 

“Slightly harder, but you’ve still got yourself a deal.”

 

And Wade keeps to his word. He doesn’t kill or maim anyone, mostly because no hitman tries to go after Spider-Man. It’s exhausting to try and keep up with someone who can swing between buildings the way the kid does, and Wade definitely breaks his ankles at least two times each trying to make jumps that Matt wouldn’t even consider attempting. By the time they’re back at Peter’s building, they’re both on slightly better terms with each other, and the kid seems to have a much easier time calling him ‘Wade’ rather than Deadpool.

 

Wade remembers to break the ladder leading from street level up to the fire escape.

 

He continues his creepy routine the next day, and in the morning he gets stabbed yet again. In the afternoon he almost gets shot, and after two more days of being almost murdered multiple times by hitmen trying to get Peter, it’s starting to seem like the community might have gotten the message that Peter Parker is off limits. Unfortunately, there’s only a short break before people resume the regularly scheduled program of trying to murder a child.

 

Wade hasn’t heard anything in the news about the other people that had hits placed on them dying, so he has to imagine that whoever was wanting these people dead in the first place is having an even worse week than him. Hey, at least Wade’s gotten four knives, a gun, and a really neat garrote out of the whole thing, even if he is still down twenty-five thousand dollars.

 

Wade’s been running himself ragged for a little more than a week by this point. It’s fucking exhausting. Looking out for Peter Parker in the morning and afternoon and then spending his afternoons and evenings chasing after Spider-Man as Deadpool. Wade’s in fantastic shape, thank you very much, but holy shit does Matt make that parkour shit look so much easier than it really is. After a long day of that, he either goes back to his shitty, lonely apartment and does internet research to try and figure out who wants the kid dead, or he goes out and conducts in-person interviews of those who are likely to know a little somethin’ somethin’ about who wants the kid dead. Either way, he only manages to clock about eight hours of sleep in the nine days he’s been doing this, and he’s fueled pretty much solely by caffeine and cocaine at this point.

 

He has gotten a little more information though including the new number of the probable burner phone they’re supposed to call when they complete the job and a description of the guy who’s been contracting all the hitmen.

 

He’s well aware that wearing the same sunglasses and hat and leaning up against the same brick building every day as he waits for Peter to leave school is starting to make him look like some sort of online predator searching for the teenager he’s been catfishing by pretending to be a sixteen-year-old cheerleader named Stephanie, but he does it anyway. The not-bell rings like it does every day, and Wade scans the crowd in search of Peter just like he does every day.

 

It actually takes him a bit longer to spot the kid today because he’s being flanked on either side. There’s a chubby kid on his left and a girl a couple of inches taller than him on his right, and Peter’s laughing at something the girl just said. They’re walking towards Wade, but thankfully they all seem far too preoccupied to pay attention to their surroundings. Once the trio is about fifteen feet ahead of him, Wade starts to follow them.

 

Like he does every day, Peter tenses up and looks either side of himself for whatever it is that’s triggering the Spidey-sense. At least, that’s what he’s assuming is alerting Peter to something being not quite right. The kid had mentioned it in passing during one of the days that Deadpool and Spider-Man worked side by side.

 

Wade continues to listen in on what little he can hear from the conversation going on ahead of him as he tails the kids, and from what he manages to piece together it seems like they’re trekking off to go get bubble tea from some new trendy place a few blocks away. It seems like an easy and innocent enough trip, but Wade doesn’t let himself get lulled into a false sense of security by their increasingly nice surroundings. There still aren’t a ton of people on the street, but there are a few and Wade scrutinizes each one looking for signs that they have a weapon strapped to them or up their sleeve or down their pants.

 

Everything’s going incredibly well, and Wade actually does let his guard down slightly since he’s absolutely exhausted from doing this routine for over a week. At least, it’s going well until a car screeches up to the curb right behind Wade and a guy jumps out of the backseat with a ski mask on and a gun in his hand.

 

The hitmen being sent after Peter have gotten increasingly desperate for cash and also increasingly amateur. In all honesty, Wade’s a bit surprised that it’s taken this long to get to something resembling a drive-by shooting.

 

Peter spins around the second that the tires on the car squeal, and Wade gallantly throws himself in front of the guy with the gun and gets himself shot in the stomach three times before he can snatch the gun away and crack the shooter over the head with it hard enough that he hits the ground like a sack of flour. Everyone else runs when the shooting starts, not that there are that many people to begin with, but of course, the stupid kid and his stupid friends stay. Wade’s assuming that the friends are staying because Peter chose to run towards where the shots were fired.

 

“Oh my God,” Peter says as Wade turns around with his very obviously perforated torso and blood-soaked shirt. “Don’t worry, I’m gonna call an ambula—”

 

The kid stops dead in his tracks.

 

“Wade?”

 

Shit. The sunglasses fell off during that laughably easy to win scuffle, didn’t they?

 

The fact that everything is no longer tinted slightly amber answers that question.

 

“Well hey there Peter!” Wade greets, deciding to play the oblivious card in the split second he has to think. “New Yorkers, am I right? People back home were never like this!”

 

The kid’s friends both still look horrified, and the boy has a phone halfway to his ear before Peter makes a quick ‘cut it out’ gesture at him. He hesitantly slides his phone back into his pocket, and both he and the girl follow as Peter uses his Spidey-strength to drag Wade into the nearest alley.

 

“What are you doing here? What was that?” Peter asks incredulously. “Are you okay?” he tacks on at the end, looking down towards Wade’s stomach where the bleeding has already almost stopped

 

Wade scoffs at the question, but it _is_ nice to be asked if he’s okay. Even when the answer to that question is always yes.

 

“Why don’t you tell me what _you’re_ doing here?” he counters, crossing his arms over his chest.

 

“I’m hanging out with my friends,” Peter says, narrowing his eyes. “I told you mine now you tell me yours.” He completes the demand with furrowing his brow a little and crossing his arms over his chest.

 

Ugh, the kid’s turning into a mini-Matt with all these little mannerisms.

 

“Maybe I’m just trying to be your friendly neighborhood Deadpool. Really you should be thanking me for stopping that horrible and _completely_ random act of violence!”

 

“ _That’s_ Deadpool?” the girl asks skeptically, raising one impeccable eyebrow while the boy next to her just stares on, apparently awestruck.

 

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Wade says, just as he starts hearing faint police sirens. “You guys should head out unless you want to get caught up with the cops though. Lord knows I don’t need to get dragged into that shit right now. Also, since he shot me do you think it’s okay if I keep the gun?”

 

Peter just stares at him. “Dude, you’re not getting anywhere looking like that,” he says, gesturing up at down at the complete bloody mess he is.

 

Wade stands up from where he’s been leaning against the wall and sighs. “Well, what do you suggest I do, young genius? Run shirtless down the street with all my lovely marred flesh and fresh gunshot wounds on display for the world?”

 

Peter considers him for a moment, the sirens still growing progressively louder. After a second he holds a hand out to his guy friend. “Ned, can you give me your sweatshirt?”

 

Ned, apparently, nods and sets his backpack down to pull off the plain grey sweatshirt he’s been wearing and pass it to Peter.

 

“Take off your shirt and put this on,” Peter says, the sweatshirt dangling from his hand.

 

“And leave my bloody shirt for the cops to find and check for DNA? I don’t think so.”

 

“ _Wade_ ,” Peter snaps, and it’s so completely identical to the way that Matt says his name when he’s being _really_ irritating that Wade complies almost immediately just from the sheer surprise, pulling off the blue long-sleeved shirt he’d been wearing and putting on the hoodie. How much has Peter been working with Matt that he's managed to pick up so many mannerisms?

 

He tosses the bloody shirt into the dumpster they ended up next to and tucks the gun into the back of his pants alongside one of his own before doing a little spin for Peter and his friends.

 

“Do I look decent now?” he asks.

 

“You look like you haven’t been shot, if that’s what you mean,” Peter replies before grabbing his wrist. “Come on; let’s go.”

 

When they make their way back to the sidewalk, both the guy who shot Wade and the car he’d arrived in are missing. With the perpetrator, weapon, bullets, witnesses, _and_ victim all gone, the cops won’t have any case to pursue.

 

There’s something horribly tense about the kid’s posture, and Wade can see the way he’s clenching his jaw as all four of them desert the crime scene in the pursuit of answers and bubble tea. Peter can’t very well take Wade back to his apartment and get answers there; the kid’s parents definitely wouldn’t appreciate a 6’2” immortal assassin hanging around their child. Wade’s apartment is all the way back in Manhattan, and that’s just impractical, so onward to the bubble tea shop it is.

 

They walk in relative silence after all of Wade’s jokes just get him increasingly cynical looks, and once they arrive at the shop Wade pays for everyone’s tea because these are literal children, and that’s what you do with literal children, right?

 

When they’re finally seated at a table in the back corner of the shop, Peter decides to demand answers.

 

“Wade, why were you following me?” he asks simply, hands clasped around his tea.

 

The other two kids are watching like it’s a damn soap opera playing out in front of them, and Wade just sighs. Might as well just own up to it now before the kid figures it out on his own. He’s a smart cookie, this one.

 

“You remember when I called you and we made our little eye for an eye deal?” Wade asks.

 

“You mean you asked me what my name was and told me yours.”

 

“You remember!”

 

Peter makes a face at him. “It was only like a week ago, and it was super weird; of course I remember. Now, what does this have to do with you following me? And why did that guy shoot you?”

 

“Well my dear Peter, that’s a long story. And it all begins with this.” Wade reaches into his pocket and pulls out the gold card reading ‘Spider-Man’ with a little flourish.

 

He sets in on the table between all of them and lets the kids gawk at it for a moment before speaking. “Do you little chirren know what that is?” he asks pleasantly.

 

“No…” Peter says after a moment.

 

“This,” Wade waves the card at them before putting it back in his pocket, “means that someone wants Spider-Man dead.”

 

All three kids’ eyes widen almost comically at that, but Wade trudges on through his explanation.

 

“A very dear friend of mine got a list of people that someone wanted dead, but he didn’t feel quite right handing out this card right here on account of me, his best friend, being bang buddies with Spidey’s mentor.”

 

Peter wrinkles up his face in distaste, and both his friends look to him to translate.

 

“Him and Daredevil.” Peter waves his hand in a vague gesture that, accompanied by his current facial expression, seems to get the message across. “Wait—that says Spider-Man,” Peter says suddenly. “Why were they coming after me? Did the Vulture tell someone?”

 

Wade chokes on a strawberry flavored boba. “Seriously?” he says once he’s done coughing. “Red give you the lesson on revealing your identity to your arch-nemesis or do you hero types just do that for the hell of it?”

 

“What? No—on both counts. That happened before we even met,” Peter dismisses. “But is that how they know?”

 

“They don’t know, child,” Wade says as he pulls the other card out of his pocket and slaps it down in the center of the table. “These guys are after Peter Parker.”

 

All three kids lean in to stare at the card, giving Wade shocked looks.

 

“Yeah, that’s right. Admire it. I dropped twenty-five grand to get that back from the guy who was actually gonna kill you,” Wade says.

 

There’s a moment of silence before the girl speaks. “But if you have this, then why are people coming after him? Doesn’t this mean he’s _your_ target?”

 

“Excellent question!” Wade praises, and she flashes just a hint of a smile. “The guy who wants him dead decided that since I didn’t complete the job within 24 hours I must be incompetent, so he’s been hiring different people ever since. Honestly, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been stabbed by guys going for you this week, kid.”

 

“You’ve been following me all week to stop people from assassinating me,” Peter says blankly.

 

“You betcha!”

 

“What the fuck, Wade? Why didn’t you just tell me people were trying to kill me? I could’ve gone to the cops or something!” Peter protests in a harsh whisper, and Wade grimaces. The kid kinda does have a point.

 

“I don’t trust the cops, kid. I was trying to find the guy who hired the hits myself,” he defends.

 

“You said there was a list,” the other kid, Ned, says. “Who else was on the list besides Peter and Spider-Man?”

 

“Umm...” Wade has to think for a minute. “Captain America and Black Widow, but those got turned down. James Rhodes, Pepper Potts, and Happy Hogan all got dispatched. Haven’t seen anything about them dying in the news though, so I’m guessing they’re all still alive.”

 

“Wade! You should’ve told me that! I gotta tell Mr. Stark!” Peter admonishes, standing up abruptly. “We’re going to see him right now, and you’re gonna tell him what you just told me.”

 

“But—”

 

“Someone’s trying to kill everyone he’s close to. Doesn’t that mean _anything_ to you?” Peter’s tone is harsh, but even that can’t completely conceal the slight wobble in it coupled with the way his hands shake a little. And the puppy eyes. _Oh lord,_ the puppy eyes.

 

Suddenly, Wade feels like a colossal ass. It’s so damn obvious that this kid has lost people, and he didn’t even consider that Peter might care about losing the other people who were on that list.

 

“Fine,” he sighs. “But we’re stopping by my place so I can change.”

 

* * *

 

They ditch Ned and the girl (whose name Wade never did manage to catch) at the bubble tea place before heading to the subway. Wade’s a bit less talkative than usual as he watches Peter and tries to figure out just who all this poor kid has lost. Friends? Maybe a parent? Dead parents are all the rage with the long-underwear crowd.

 

“Wade,” Peter says once they’ve been sitting on the train for a couple of stops. “Did you really spend that much money to get someone to not kill me?”

 

“Sure did, kiddo. And honestly, I should thank you for that,” he replies, smiling at the confused sound Peter makes in response. “Red’s been on my case to stop working so much, but now that I’m basically bankrupt,” a bit of an exaggeration, “maybe he’ll finally hop off my ass.”

 

Shit. Judging by the horribly guilty look that flashes across Peter’s face, that was the wrong thing to say. Backtrack, Wilson. Fix this shit.

 

“But really it isn’t even that much money. Maybe two or three high-profile jobs and I’ll be back to living like an averagely well-off person!” he assures, but now the kid just looks uncomfortable.

 

Probably because he was just reminded that Wade kills people for a living. And isn’t that quite the uh… what’s it called? Oxymoron!

 

“Well, um. Thanks,” Peter says after a minute. “For spending all that money and getting stabbed for me. And shot for me. And spending an entire week tailing me everywhere.”

 

“You’re very welcome. I’ll only use it very minimally to make you feel bad for me,” Wade assures, and Peter thankfully catches that for the joke that it is.

 

The rest of the ride to the stop nearest Wade’s apartment is spent in similar conversation, and Wade remembers to remind the kid to check his fucking six every once in a while.

 

Wade lives in an alright apartment in the East Village. It’s nothing excessively lavish, but the exposed brick and old wood floors reminded him enough of the place he and Ness used to share that he’d decided the slightly steeper rent was worth it. To put it nicely though, the place is a wreck.

 

Every bit of every one of Vanessa’s possessions that had even sort of survived explosion came with him from the old apartment to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters to this new place. The framed posters hadn’t been burnt too badly, but they’re still not in the best of shape considering the charred and torn edges on so many of them, along with what might be a bit of blood from Wade actually blowing himself to shit. The deep purple throw blanket on the couch still smells of burnt plastic, but Wade can’t really bring himself to throw it away when every time he looks at it he can hear Ness’s voice giving him a very serious lecture on how jewel tones _are_ coming back in fashion, _just you wait Wade Wilson_.

 

“Your place is uh… It’s nice,” Peter says as he looks around and takes in the rather strange décor.

 

“It’s a place,” Wade says agreeably, pulling off the sweatshirt that Peter’s friend had lent him and tossing it over the back of the couch. “You alright with blood, kid?” he asks, since that seems like a prudent question considering what he’s about to do.

 

“Uh, I guess so. Why?” Peter asks, his eyebrows furrowed.

 

“Because while accelerated healing is indeed fantastic, it means that if a bullet doesn’t go through me, I heal over it. So I have to get those out if I want the muscles to be able to heal completely. Hand me that knife, yeah?” Wade nods his head towards the paring knife with the bright yellow handle on the counter, and Peter gives him a look of disgust.

 

“That’s so unsanitary. Don’t you have a first aid kit or something? With like a real scalpel and forceps and all that?” the kid asks.

 

Wade shakes his head. “I have the nearest sharp object and either a pair of dollar store tweezers or my fingers.”

 

Peter gives him another look but hands over the knife anyway, watching as Wade leans back against the kitchen counter.

 

Wade uses the hand that isn’t holding the knife to feel across his torso in the general area he remembers being shot in until he feels something hard under the skin and a few layers of muscle. After doing this for a few years, he’s gotten pretty adept at figuring out which hard spots are foreign debris and which are just his fucked up skin. He inhales deeply before jamming the knife in right alongside where he feels the bullet until he hears the scraping sound of metal on metal. After a half second of fumbling for the tweezers he knows are on the counter next to him, he finally finds them and jams them in as well. He can hear the sharp intake of Peter’s breath, but he doesn’t open his eyes to look at the kid until after he’s pulled the bullet out and dropped it on the counter.

 

Peter looks absolutely horrified. That’s fair.

 

“Let me do the others,” he says, and Wade’s taken aback for a moment.

 

He huffs softly. “Be my guest, kiddo. Next one’s riiiight…” Wade traces his finger a little to the left of the already mostly healed gash and presses down, “here.”

 

Poor kid probably just wants to make amends for the fact that Wade’s full of bullets for him.

 

Peter steps forward and takes the knife from Wade. His hands are shaking a little, but there’s a look of determination on his face as he takes a steadying breath and slices into Wade’s skin. Just as soon as he pulls the knife away, the skin’s already almost knitted itself back together. He gives Wade a confused look, and Wade takes pity on the kid.

 

“This is why I don’t use a scalpel,” he says as he takes the knife back. “You gotta make the cut bad enough that it stays open while you get the bullet out. Leaving the knife in there while you work is the best way to do that.”

 

With that, he shoves the knife back into himself, twisting it to create an opening wide enough that he has a few seconds to grab the bullet with the tweezers and yank it out before it heals shut.

 

Peter still looks disturbed, but that’s more of an undercurrent to a different emotion on his face now. Possibly pity? Oh no, that’s no good.

 

“Don’t worry. You heal slow enough that you’ll never have to do this,” Wade assures as he moves on to the final bullet.

 

He has enough practice doing this that the last one only takes him a couple of seconds before a third bullet is dropped down on the counter and he’s turning to wash the blood from his hands in the kitchen sink.

 

“Time for me to hide my lovely figure beneath some red spandex. Wait here, will ya?” Wade says before walking past Peter and into the bedroom.

 

The door clicks shut behind him, and he picks up the nearest article of clothing from the ground to wipe the remaining blood from his stomach. The suit is crumpled up in the corner of the room, and Wade picks it up, tossing it down on the bed. He pulls both guns out from where they were hastily shoved in the waist of his pants and sets them down beside the suit before stripping out of the rest of his clothes and pulling the suit on. Before he puts on the gloves, he takes a second to text Dopinder to ask for a ride.

 

He exits the bedroom with the suit on and mask in hand before heading to a cardboard box in the corner of the living room that contains all of his weapons. He tosses both his gun and the gun he’d stolen into the box before rooting around and pulling a matching pair of handguns out.

 

“We’re only going to the Tower,” Peter says awkwardly. “I don’t think you’re gonna need an arsenal.”

 

“You never know, kid. The boy scout motto is always be prepared, and I plan to stick to that,” Wade answers as he pulls a couple of knives from the box.

 

“Were you even ever a boy scout?” Peter asks.

 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Wade replies, pulling on his mask. “Dopinder should be here in a sec, I’m gonna go grab the cards. Maybe you can get your mom to put ‘em in a scrapbook or something.”

 

“My parents are dead,” Peter replies, but there isn’t the sort of pain in his voice that Wade would normally associate with a declaration like that. 

 

The kid doesn’t clench his fists and grind his teeth like Matt did when he finally told Wade about his dad, and he doesn’t sound choked up like Danny does whenever his parents are mentioned in passing.

 

“I’m… sorry for your loss,” Wade says awkwardly.

 

Peter shrugs. “It happened when I was really young.”

 

Wade wants to yell at Peter that he still is really young, but he doesn’t. “So, uh, who takes care of you now?”

 

“My Aunt,” the kid says, and there’s a little clench in his jaw that lets Wade know he’s getting closer to whatever Peter’s loss is.

 

“That’s good,” Wade says, and Peter gives him a funny look. “It’s good that you have someone. Ugh, feelings are not my thing.” He’s thankfully saved from the incredibly awkward atmosphere of the conversation when his phone pings with a text. “Well, our chariot awaits, young ‘un, so I’m just gonna go grab those cards real quick.”

 

Wade walks back into the bedroom and picks his jeans up off the floor, fishing the two cards out of his pocket and tucking them into one of the pockets on his belt. It’s a pretty easy task, so he’s back in no time and holding open the apartment door for Peter.

 

“You leave through your front door wearing that?” he asks critically.

 

Wade shrugs. “Neighbors don’t really give a fuck, the cops already know who I am, I can’t die, and it ain’t like there’s anyone livin’ with me that I gotta protect.” Not anymore at least. Made sure of that one, didn’t we Wilson?

 

Peter is still wearing a vague look of concern on his face, but he goes along with it and follows Wade out of the apartment.

 

Sure enough, Dopinder is on the street in front of the building, the windows of the cab down and another one of his bullshit self-help cassettes playing. This time it’s one about being charismatic.

 

Wade opens the door for Peter to get into the backseat and gets in after him.

 

“Hello Mr. Pool,” Dopinder greets cheerfully, “and… son?”

 

Wade and Peter both choke. And okay, yeah, Wade’s old enough to have a kid Peter’s age, but Dopinder has known him for a fair while and he’s never mentioned a kid because, oh yeah, _he doesn’t fucking have one_.

 

“Not my son,” Wade says, glancing over at Peter who looks just this side of mortified.

 

“Cousin?”

 

“I’ve been hired to kill him, Dopinder,” Wade announces, making eye-contact with Dopinder in the rearview mirror. Pause for dramatic effect aaand… “Of course, I’m not going to kill him.”

 

“Ah, well then, where to?” Dopinder asks.

 

“Avengers Tower,” Peter answers.

 

Despite his unfamiliarity with the turn signal and other general safety features of a car, Dopinder is still a much better driver than Matt is. Wade watched the videos. He _loves_ those videos. When he starts slipping into too bad of a funk, either Domino or Dopinder or Weasel will text him a link to the best quality video that exists. None of them know why he finds it so fucking hilarious, and he doesn’t plan on telling any of them the reason why. There’s not a single doubt in Wade’s mind that if he gave away Matt’s identity or even just the fact that he’s blind then he’d find himself strung up on a roof somewhere for Matt to practice techniques he reserves almost exclusively for tight-lipped criminals.

 

They pull up to the curb outside of the building rather than right onto the sidewalk, and Dopinder lets them out with a jaunty goodbye before swerving back into the traffic and around as many cars as he possibly can. His driving skills _have_ improved since he started having to avoid getting shot at while driving Wade around. It seems those kills come in handy for a cab driver in New York City.

 

Avengers Tower is not only in a busy part of the city; it’s also an incredibly popular place for tourists to take pictures. There are about as many broke college kids dressed as Avengers standing around offering pictures for a dollar here as there are Spider-Men in Times Square doing the same.

 

Unfortunately for Wade, his costume is the best ‘replica’ most of these people have ever seen, and for some reason, Deadpool has been growing in popularity, so he’s almost immediately swarmed with people wanting to take pictures. He’s not even a damn superhero, what the fuck.

 

It doesn’t bother him so much that people want pictures; he’s always been an attention whore. And a whore in general, but that’s not the point. The point is that he’s managed to lose the damn kid in a place that the kid frequently comes to around this time of day. It’s only been a couple of hours since he took out the last hitman, but every time he gets rid of one, the next one pops up even quicker. Like whack-a-mole but with more blood.

 

Where’s the kid? Come on, where’s the kid? He can’t be _that_ hard to spot.

 

Wade’s looking around a little frantically by the time he finally spots him standing maybe ten feet away. And there’s some incredibly shady character coming up behind him. And, of course, in all of the commotion, the kid isn’t watching his fucking six.

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Wade snaps before elbowing his way through a group of Canadian tourists and shoving Peter out of the way just in time to catch a knife to the sternum.

 

There’s a pretty big collective scream, probably prompted by the spray of blood when Wade yanks the knife out of his chest and hands it to a shocked Peter who’s still standing next to him.

 

The would-be assassin—actually, no, this man is an insult to assassins everywhere—is apparently stunned too, and Wade takes the opportunity to punch him hard enough to knock him out.

 

“Peter,” he announces, leaning down to pick up the hitman and toss him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, “we’re going to go inside now.”

 

Peter nods, and Wade uses one arm to secure his hold on the unconscious man while pressing the hand of the other between Peter’s shoulders to urge him forward.

 

When they step inside the building, security immediately hones in on them, but Peter seems to have gotten his bearings and fumbles with the hand that isn’t holding the bloody knife to get some sort of card from his pocket which he swipes at a security checkpoint.

 

The guard stares at Peter and then at Wade.

 

“My clearance lets me bring guests,” Peter states simply, and that must be true because the guard hesitantly waves them through to the elevators.

 

“Sorry about the mess,” Wade whispers to the guard as they walk past him, tilting his head towards the trail of bloody footprints left in his wake.

 

Peter pushes the elevator button, and a moment later it opens. The poor people getting off of it either gawk at Wade or do their best to completely avoid looking at him. Peter offers them all a smile, and once they’re gone he gestures for Wade to get onto the elevator as well.

 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Parker,” a chipper voice says from fucking nowhere, and Wade maybe jumps a little bit. Should’ve expected that in any building that has to do with Stark. Fucking robots in the ceiling. “Who are your friends?”

 

“Hey Friday,” the kid replies. “This is Deadpool and a guy who tried to kill me. Where’s Mr. Stark?”

 

“One of the guys who tried to kill you,” Wade corrects, and Peter rolls his eyes.

 

“He’s in the lab. Would you and your friends like to see him?” ceiling-voice answers.

 

“Yeah, thanks Friday.”

 

The elevator starts moving, and the guy slung over Wade’s shoulder makes a vague groaning noise. Wade knocks the guy’s head against the back wall of the elevator just to make sure he stays knocked out. Judging by the lack of noises that follow, it seems his goal was accomplished.

 

“Dude, you’re gonna give him brain damage,” Peter says with a distasteful look.

 

“Uh, dude, he tried to kill you!” Wade shoots back just before the doors open.

 

As soon as Wade steps off of the elevator, he calls out in a loud and obnoxious sing-song, “Ooh, Anthony~”

 

There’s the heavy, metal clang of something hitting the floor somewhere in the lab followed shortly by Tony’s head popping up from behind a table.

 

The kid smiles and gives a little wave at Tony who is doing a fantastic job of looking entirely unimpressed.

 

“Peter,” he says calmly, “why are you in my lab with Deadpool and a dead body?”

 

“He’s not dead!” Peter protests immediately, holding up both his hands in a gesture of submission. One hand just happens to still be holding the bloody knife.

 

“Right, well, it looks like you stabbed someone, and for some reason enlisted Deadpool to help you bring the body here. So start talking,” Tony says, crossing his arms over his chest.

 

Aw, look at him putting all five feet eight inches into trying to look intimidating.

 

“People are trying to kill me,” Peter blurts out, and that only serves to further confuse Tony and shorten his lifespan.

 

“ _What?!_ ” Tony practically teleports to the kid and immediately starts looking him over for wounds

 

“You heard the kid,” Wade says. “This fucker just tried to stab him in front of your damn building.”

 

“Tried?” Tony says, turning to face Wade though both his hands are still on Peter’s shoulders. “Then where the hell is all the blood coming from?”

 

Wade sighs and drops the hitman on the ground with a dull thud before taking the knife from Peter and jamming it into his own chest right in line with the tear in his suit caused by the earlier stabbing.

 

“Would you look at that! A perfect fit!” he says with a theatrical gasp before pulling the knife back out and getting another nice arterial spurt of blood all over the ground.

 

Tony looks horrified, and Peter looks slightly less horrified than he did when Wade repeatedly skewered himself with a kitchen knife to get bullets out.

 

“People have been trying to kill me all week, Mr. Stark,” Peter explains, turning those big, sad puppy eyes on someone other than Wade for once, _thank God_.

 

“All week? Why the hell am I just now hearing about this?” Tony sputters indignantly.

 

“Because I didn’t know people were trying to kill me until I saw Wa—Deadpool get shot by one of them a couple of hours ago!” Peter answers, and aw, the kid almost used his name first. A big step in their friendship.

 

“People are trying to kill you,” the genius repeats dumbly.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Peter replies emphatically.

 

“Is this a Spider-Man thing?”

 

“No.” Wade’s the one to answer this time. “It’s an I’m-Tony-Stark’s-Intern thing.”

 

Tony makes a face.

 

Wade groans. “Jesus, I thought you were supposed to be smart. Let me spell this out for you: someone hired hits on people you’re close to. Captain America, Black Widow, War Machine, Spider-Man, your lady friend, Happy Whoever, and oh yeah, _Peter fucking Parker_ ,” he snaps. “They were charging twenty grand for the kid, but I’m not sure about the rest.”

 

“I thought you said twenty-five thousand,” Peter says, his head once again tilted slightly in the same ‘I’m confused’ gesture Matt does.

 

“No, I had to pay the guy who took the hit twenty-five to get him to give it to me,” Wade says, and Peter gets that guilty look back on his face. “Again! No biggie! That’s like three murders, maybe seven or eight heavy bodily harms—”

 

“How’d you find out about the hits, Deadpool?” Tony interrupts, pinching the bridge of his nose.

 

“How do you think, genius? If you didn’t know my job already, I literally just said it,” Wade snarks back.

 

The hitman on the floor groans. Wade kicks him in the head.

 

Nighty night.

 

“Okay, fine. My friend didn’t feel right giving out the hit on Spider-Man since Spider-Man is Daredevil’s protégé and Daredevil and I fuck, so he gave it to me.” Wade tosses the Spider-Man card on the floor at Tony’s feet. “Friend mentioned the Spidey hit was part of a list. I asked who else was on the list. I heard the name Peter, knew it was Spidey’s name, figured out Spidey’s last name, figured out the hit was on him, tracked down the guy who got the hit, paid him for it, and started taking out every other hitman that got sent when I didn’t do the job fast enough. Got it now?”

 

Tony seems to be stunned silent for once, and Wade is oddly proud of himself for being the cause. He can cross that one off his bucket list. Next up: get Colossus to cuss him out.

 

“You spent twenty-five thousand dollars to keep one hitman off of him and then just started killing the rest?”

 

“I thought it’d buy me long enough to figure out who was calling for the hit and kill them instead— I didn’t think they’d decide 24 hours was too long to not have killed a teenager. And I didn’t kill them! I just caused some bodily harm in the pursuit of knowledge!”

 

Tony frowns at him. “You tortured them.”

 

“Well at first, yeah. But word got around that the kid was off limits, so the guys in my circles stopped trying to take the job. These amateurs start talking the second I pull their knives out of me!”

 

Tony throws a look at Peter that’s equal parts concerned and ‘is this guy serious’ before looking back to Wade. “So what do you know about who’s trying to get everyone I love killed?”

 

“I have a phone number and a vague description of the guy in contact with the hitmen,” Wade answers with a shrug.

 

“Well?” Stark says impatiently. “What’s he look like?”

 

“White guy, around six foot, receding hairline, black hair, brown eyes, wears fancy suits,” Wade answers.

 

“What’s the phone number?” Tony asks.

 

“Don’t you wanna know my number?” Wade teases back, and Tony rolls his eyes.

 

“I’m good, thanks. You’re not my type.”

 

“But Daredevil is? I’m wounded!” Wade gasps dramatically, placing one hand over his chest.

 

“Daredevil isn’t my type either. You’re the one who’s sleeping with him,” Tony shoots back in an unfairly accusatory voice.

 

“But—”

 

Peter manages to catch Wade’s eye with the way he’s furiously and mutely shaking his head, accompanying it with dragging a finger over his throat.

 

Well now. Isn’t that curious? It appears as though Matt Murdock was the one to have a passionate affair with Tony Stark. And when the hell would that have happened anyway?

 

“Just tell me the number,” Stark says, sounding put out.

 

Wade gets out his phone and opens his notes where the number is very carefully hidden by tacking one digit at a time randomly onto other notes in an order known only to him. He reads it off to Tony and watches to see what the man will do next.

 

“You got that, Friday?” Tony asks.

 

“Sure did, Boss,” the ceiling voice answers.

 

“Great, your robot knows the number. Now what?” Wade says.

 

“Now we track the number.”

 

Wade hopes that his ‘are you stupid?’ look comes through even with the mask on. “It’s a burner phone, genius. No way in hell is it getting you anywhere.”

 

“No, probably not,” Tony agrees. “But I’m not gonna just stand here like a jackass when everyone I care about it at risk. Speaking of which, I need to make some calls.”

 

Tony turns and walks off, his phone already up to his ear.

 

Wade glances over at Peter who’s staring down at the puddle of blood on the floor from when Wade re-stabbed himself.

 

“Y’know,” he says, resting his arm on Peter’s shoulder, “I think it kinda looks like a few faces.”

 

Peter gives him a look like he’s crazy, so he just aims the kid’s head back at the puddle and traces the shape in the air.

 

“I mean… I _guess._ I think it looks more like a butterfly,” Peter concedes eventually. “I feel like Rorschach would have something to say about that.”

 

Wade shrugs agreeably. “Most shrinks do.”

 

The hitman on the floor groans once again, but this time Wade doesn’t proceed to immediately knock him out again, oh no no. Instead, he kneels down next to the guy and puts a very gentle, bloody, gloved hand on his cheek.

 

“Hey you, you’re finally awake,” he says, and the guy jolts like he’s been electrocuted as he tries to pull away from Wade. “You were trying to cross the border right?”

 

“What the fuck are you on about?!” the guy spits, wincing at what Wade can only imagine is a skull-splitting headache.

 

“Are—” Peter looks like he’s just barely managing to hold back a laugh, “are you quoting _Skyrim_ at him?”

 

“Huh, maybe I am. Sure sets the theme for going medieval on his ass when he decides not to tell me who fuckin’ hired him,” Wade snaps the second part dangerously, and the bared teeth are clear even through the mouthless mask.

 

The guy puts his hands up in surrender, a complete 180 from the tough guy act he was pulling a second ago. Given the fact that he’s flat on his back and in a room with not one, not two, but _three_ super-people (even if he isn't aware of that), it’s both the smartest and only option.

 

“Look, man,” he says in a pleading tone. “I needed the cash, okay? Ain’t nothin’ personal!” This last part is directed at Peter, and the kid—the idiot kid—looks like he maybe feels like barest hints of sympathy for the guy who _tried to murder him_.

 

“Who hired you?!” Wade demands, grabbing the guy’s shoulders and slamming him down against the floor.

 

“I don’t know! I don’t know! This older white guy just came up to me when I was tryin’ to score a hit, yeah? Said he’d give me three grand to knock off some guy. Gave me a picture and told me to hang around Avengers Tower and that he,” the guy nods to Peter, “would show! Sure as hell didn’t say nothin’ about his fuckin’ bodyguard bein’ Deadpool!”

 

“You still have the picture he gave you?” Peter asks calmly, and the guy nods eagerly.

 

“Yeah—yeah it’s in my pocket! Take it!” He tilts his head to indicate which pocket, and Wade reaches into it.

 

His hand comes back a moment later with a five by seven glossy photo of Peter, taken while the kid was clearly unaware he was being watched. He has headphones in and appears to be doing homework, but the most disturbing thing about the picture is that it was painfully obviously taken in one of the lower floor lounges of the very building they’re standing in.

 

Wade holds the picture out to Peter, and the kid hesitates for a moment before picking up a nearby rag and using that to grab the picture.

 

“Mr. Stark!” the kid calls out loudly, and the man on the floor seizes up a little.

 

“What?” Tony calls back as he returns to view, his phone still held up to his ear.

 

Peter waves the picture at him. “Can you check this for fingerprints? He said the guy who hired it gave it to him.”

 

Tony uses his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear and pulls on a pair of nitrile gloves from a box that just happens to be sitting within reach. He comes over and takes the picture from Peter before carrying it over to one of the workbenches and sliding some device over it. A green light emanates from the object and scans the photo. Tony turns it over, and the light scans again.

 

“Fingerprints from two individuals detected,” ceiling-voice says. “Searching for matches now.”

 

Peter looks over at Tony. “Who are you on the phone with?”

 

“Natasha has me on hold,” Tony answers, looking a little bit put out. “I told everyone else what’s going on. Call your Aunt and tell her you’re staying here until this is sorted out, and that she’s welcome to join you. If Deadpool’s done with this guy, I’m calling the cops to come get him.”

 

“We’re done; he was very cooperative,” Wade replies, kissing the guy on the cheek before getting up. “I’ll be seeing you around,” he adds in a whisper, just to the would-be murderer.

 

The guy gulps and looks incredibly unnerved.

 

“Um, Deadpool,” Peter says softly. “You can go home if you want. I mean the cops are gonna be here soon, and I know you said you didn’t want to deal with them earlier.”

 

Aw, sweet kid. Always thinking of helping someone else.

 

“You know what? I probably _should_ go,” Wade agrees. “I’ll even leave the knife in your capable hands as long as you promise to check your six every once in a while.”

 

Peter smiles at him. “I promise.”

 

As Wade blows Tony a kiss and heads to the elevator, he hears Stark ask the kid something along the lines of, ‘Since when are you friends with Deadpool?’

 

Annoyingly enough, Wade can’t fall asleep once he gets home, even with how tired he is. He strips out of the suit and leaves it in a path leading to his couch where he collapses face down. After a few futile minutes he even gives in and pulls the purple microfleece blanket over himself, but even that isn’t enough to knock him out.

 

The kid is safe. He’s in Avengers Tower, probably with Iron Man and a bunch of other heroes. There are security protocols in place.

 

The picture of the kid the hitman had was taken inside Avengers Tower.

 

Wade groans and pulls out his phone to check up on the kid via Instagram. The most recent post is from just a few minutes ago, and it’s a picture of his hand giving a thumbs up next to the bloody knife. The caption says ‘thanks, Deadpool!’. A few people in the comments are incredibly confused, but the rest of Peter’s followers must also follow Buzzfeed News and have seen the post about Deadpool heroically rescuing a teenaged SI intern from being stabbed in front of Avengers Tower. There’s one comment that sticks out, written by someone with the name backinaflash.

 

‘Why were you with Deadpool in the first place?’

 

That’s a question they should’ve probably come up with a reasonable cover story for. Whoops.

 

There’s already a reply to it though that simply reads, ‘he’s friends with spider-man too’. Smart kid.

 

Wade continues to stalk social media and the news in regards to what happened, in the hopes that he’ll hear about whoever it was getting caught. There are a few text messages that he hasn’t bothered to check, and it only occurs to him that he maybe should’ve read them when he hears pounding at the door followed by Matt yelling, “Open this fucking door or I will kick it down myself, so help me God!”

 

Matt does not kick down the door because Wade lets him in.

 

Thankfully, Matt also doesn’t try and kill Wade despite what his text messages both implied and explicitly stated.

 

Wade gets the chance to explain himself, and Matt still rants at him furiously for not cluing him or Castle or anyone else in on it, but he rants while cooking something that actually smells surprisingly good considering Wade had no idea there was any food in his fridge or cupboards to begin with.

 

Sleep eventually comes to Wade, but he doesn’t wake up feeling truly rested until after reading an article about how the hits on Tony Stark’s friends were placed by a jaded ex-girlfriend with almost as many psychological issues as Bugattis in her garage. She’d apparently visited Avengers Tower under the guise of being interested in a business arrangement with Stark Industries, and that was when she’d gotten the picture of Peter. The man who had been directly hiring the hitmen was her fucking lawyer, and he’d cracked the second his prints were found on the picture found on the final hitman.

 

At least Wade was right about rich and holding a personal grudge describing a lot of people in Stark’s life.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings:  
> There's a scene where a character has to mutilate themself slightly in order to remove bullets from themself. This is the possible body horror tag warning.
> 
> There are multiple scenes in which a character is injured.
> 
> A character stabs themself non-fatally and in a comedic context.
> 
> As always, check me out on tumblr at dumbbitchnumberone!


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